


Jackie Price: Merry Christmas

by EtchJetty



Series: Etch's Sketches - A One-Shot Collection [21]
Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Christmas, Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:07:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22060786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtchJetty/pseuds/EtchJetty
Summary: An eight-year-old girl investigates her mysterious neighbour and discovers he's Eidolon.Secret Santa 2019 gift for tmthesaurus on the Cauldron Discord.
Series: Etch's Sketches - A One-Shot Collection [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1155266
Comments: 5
Kudos: 37





	Jackie Price: Merry Christmas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tmthesaurus (Duat)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duat/gifts).



Her name was Jackie Price, she was eight years old, and she had a _lead_. 

According to the evidence she gathered, sprawled in crayon across several Blue’s Clues souvenir notebooks in the clumsy handwriting of a third grader, the neighbor with the big ears _never_ used his car. Jackie had run an experiment, placing two identical pebbles in the exhaust pipes of both in the neighbor's car and her mom's car as a control. The pebble in her mom's car fell out of the pipe the first time they went food shopping. While Jackie put the bags in the trunk, she had surreptitiously checked the pipe. 

No pebble.

After waiting a week to check on the neighbor's car, the pebble was still there. The neighbor obviously never used his car. And she never saw him leave the house, either, at least on the two sick days that she had swung after Thanksgiving.

Despite that, she sometimes saw him on the TV. He was a member of the local news station, occasionally popping up to read the weather. 

His name was David, and he predicted snow the second weekend of December.

He was right, of course, which led Jackie to be even more suspicious of him. Perhaps that was her downfall, because when she was filling her notebook with marks on whether or not she caught him on the TV, glancing out of the window to double check that David's car was still in the exact spot it was, and that the lights were still on in his house. Despite that, he was on live television, dutifully reporting the weather, even though Jackie _knew_ he had been home not minutes before.

"What _are_ you doing, Jackie?" her mom had asked.

"I think our neighbor might be Santa Claus," she replied. 

Evidently, that was the wrong thing to say, because her mother had then decided that the best way to resolve this situation was to simply introduce themselves to David and threaten the investigation's operational security entirely.

The doorbell rang.

Jackie and her mom waited on the step, layered in winter clothing.

Her heart thudded in lockstep with the sound of footsteps from within the house.

The front door creaked open. 

It was David. He glanced at the two of them, and Jackie’s mom smiled. David smiled back. 

“Hi,” said Jackie’s mom. “I’m Elizabeth.”

“David,” he said. 

They shook hands, and Jackie was sure that there was something very, very wrong about the way that they looked at each other just then.

It reminded her of the way her mom used to look at... 

She shook her head. The rest of that first meeting didn’t lead to Jackie getting any clues confirming or denying that Mr. David was Santa Claus. It was time for some investigative journalism.

\---

That night, Jackie set her alarm to wake her up at 3 in the morning. She snuck past her mom’s room and climbed out of the window in the sunroom. 

Winter clothes on, she sneakily made her way to the fence separating her family’s lawn from David’s, stopping when she heard voices from inside David’s house.

Jackie removed one earmuff and pressed her left ear to a hole in the fence.

“...probably has some awareness of my power,” said David. Jackie gasped out loud. _It was true._ “At any rate, she's too interested in me for my liking. I think I’m about to be outed by a little girl.”

A woman’s voice from inside scoffed. “Well, that’s entirely your fault,” she said, with the hint of an accent. “You know I can’t predict you. I always have to basically guess what you’re going to do next, and for people really close to you, it’s still difficult.”

She heard David sigh. Jackie glanced through the hole in the fence, removing her ear, and saw David staring out of his window in the direction of her house. With him was a woman in a suit, patting him on the back. It looked like what they were saying was important, so Jackie covered her left ear and uncovered her right ear, pressing that one to the hole instead. 

“...is that this isn’t temporary. People, children all over the world need you,” said the woman. “You can’t just predict snow storms all the time. You have a real duty to the world, and we both know you’re a terrible weatherman.” 

David snorted. “So I misread the prompter. So what if I adjusted the weather a little bit? It was harmless.”

Jackie couldn’t see what the woman did, but she assumed she shrugged. “I have other things to worry about. Do you know what day it is tomorrow?” she asked. 

“Saturday,” he responded instantly. “I have a date with... well, actually I don’t know if it’s a date, but we’re getting coffee--”

“It’s Christmas Eve, David,” said the woman. “And if I may make a suggestion, you should...” Footsteps. Jackie quickly looked through the hole in the fence. The woman and David were walking deeper into the house. 

But that confirmed it, didn’t it? 

David was _Santa Claus_. 

Now she just had to catch him in the act.

\---

It was 1 AM, and Jackie couldn’t stop herself from yawning. 

It probably wasn’t her brightest idea to stay up until 3 last night, because the excitement of solving the mystery had kept her up for a while after. Her mother let her stay home as she went to get coffee with a friend, and Jackie decided to take a nap in preparation for catching Santa.

While it had helped considerably, Jackie was still about to call it a night. The chimney was silent.

She sighed, turned around, when she heard a faint _whumph_ from the direction of the hearth.

Slowly floating down her chimney, surrounded in a green glow, was a man in red trousers. And a red jacket. Holding a bag.

No.

Slowly floating down her chimney, with a bushy white beard he had not had the day before, was _David._

“Ho, ho, ho,” he said, sounding quite unlike the Santa she knew from TV. Quite thinner, too. 

“Santa?” asked Jackie, barely a whisper. 

“Santa,” agreed David. He slung the bag over his shoulder and took out the presents from within, placing them on the ground next to the Christmas tree.

Jackie couldn’t breathe. _She was right. She was right, she was right, she was right._

She wanted to scream and laugh and cry because _she was right._

“Cookies and milk are on the side table,” she eventually managed to say. It felt like she was choking on joy. _Santa Claus_ was in her living room. _Santa Claus!_

“Thanks, kiddo,” said Santa. David. Whatever. He grabbed a cookie and took a bite. “These are good,” he said.

“They’re Chips Ahoy,” she said. 

“Even better,” said David, and she knew he meant it. 

She found her legs slowly moving. She wasn’t even aware she was doing it until she was right next to him, throwing her arms around him and crying silently. 

“Thank you,” she said.

David stiffened, but hugged her back. 

“Thank _you,_ ” he said. “I have to get back to my sleigh now, but give this to your mom, okay?” Santa handed her a small box. 

“Okay,” she said, not letting go of the hug. 

“I have to get back to my sleigh, Jackie,” he said.

“I know,” she said. 

They stayed like that for a little longer.


End file.
